Fear and loathing as a female runner

British international athlete Verity Ockenden writes about a traumatic experience on a recent training run that underlined the safety issues female athletes still have to face

As I write this column on November 11, the reminders are everywhere. I open Instagram for a casual scroll and read La Repubblica’s latest headline; today marks one year since the Italian student Giulia Cecchettin’s death at the hands of her partner, one year in which a further 113 femicides have occurred in the country I live in. 

My reels replay the viral clips of Saoirse Ronan reminding Paul Mescal that self defence is “what girls have to think about all the time”. I have experienced my fair share of cat calling in pretty much every country I have ever been to and learned to brush it off. I was followed by a cyclist in the dark a few years back and even had a driver swerve toward me once for a laugh before racing off again, but I had pretty much forgotten about all of that until Saturday. 

When I say forgotten, what I really mean is that I had internalised all of the subsequent behaviours I had since adopted so that they became second nature and I no longer  actively thought about the precautions I was taking while out running. I was lucky enough to be able to stick to daylight hours, I didn’t wear earphones and I automatically switched sides of the road to give myself a decent gap on passing strangers. 

All this I had normalised, so familiar was I with the routes I ran every day that I wasn’t afraid when I passed the local farmer out with his shotgun slung over his shoulder, or the goatherd and his pack of dogs. We all knew and respected each other, just minding our business, doing our jobs. 

On Saturday, I was one hour and thirty minutes into a long run that finished at tempo pace. I had waited for the fog to clear before heading out, and it had turned into a gorgeously sunny day. My husband had asked if I was going to take my phone with me, and I said I wouldn’t since I found it too cumbersome and distracting on faster paced runs. 

I told him the route I planned on taking and left without a second thought, with only my watch on my wrist and a gel in my pocket. I was enjoying myself, feeling excited about holding my tempo pace for longer this week, and feeling quietly confident despite the burn with 15 minutes remaining on the clock. 

I had hardly seen a soul all morning as I hammered the country lanes that stretched for miles into the distance,…